‘The law provides for corrections through claims and objections’

GUWAHATI: As Assam puts out the final draft of its National Register of Citizens on Monday, 48-year-old Prateek Hajela is again the man of the moment. The IAS officer has been spearheading the mammoth exercise since 2013 when he was appointed the state coordinator. His colleagues often talk about how a lot of the software used in the exercise are his brainchild.

spoke to Hajela as he gave the final touches to the NRC. Edited excerpts:

Sadiq Naqvi

anywhere in the country. One of the big challenges was that unless people were able to get hold of their pre-1971 documents, it would be very difficult for them to submit their application forms. So we digitised the pre-1971 electoral rolls, including the 1951 NRC, to make them searchable in English, Bangla, Assamese, and to maintain authenticity we had to link the original image of each document.

The next big challenge was to educate the public to fill up their form. Then the next challenge was to ascertain if the parental linkages are correct. For that, I created the family tree. There is already a provision in law for that… Only thing is how do you implement and that is where ingenuity is involved. Declared foreigners are excluded as per rules. Similarly, there is an SC order that says D-voters are not to be included, where the SC said undoubtedly these are doubtful voters and their inclusion will depend on decision of the

Foreigners Tribunals. It is a logical thing. If the father’s citizenship is under doubt then how can their descendants be included?